Few people will have been unmoved by the pictures of joy and anticipation which have been broadcast from Gaza in the past twenty-four hours. After fifteen months of horror at a scale that those of us in the rest of the world will mercifully never experience, there is the chance that the death and destruction may be coming to an end.
Unarmed and facing Israeli tanks amid devastation next to his hospital, one Palestinian doctor shows the world what courage looks like. It is a photo that will come to symbolise the sheer enormity of Israel’s assault on healthcare in Gaza and its attempt to empty the north of Gaza of Palestinians altogether. It is ethnic cleansing and it is deliberate policy. It’s not even secret. It is called …
“I want to tell whoever is willing to listen that what is happening in Gaza now is a genocide…We don’t teach about genocides in order to realise it retrospectively. We teach about it in order to prevent it and to stop it.” Amos Goldberg, Professor of Holocaust Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Having posted a personal story about my passion for motorsport a couple of weeks ago, I am again back onto that theme with this one. It is about something else currently on TV: the drama series ‘Senna’ now streaming on Netflix. I begin by discussing the first three episodes – but I’ve since added a postscript on the rest of the series.
It is no secret that I have been nutty about motorsport all my life. No surprise, then, that I am currently glued to the four-part docuseries ‘Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story’, which is being screened on BBC Two. For me it brings back special personal memories, as someone who was around at the time, albeit with no more than a brief cameo role in what happened.
You always think things cannot get any worse for the Palestinians. But every year they do. (An extract from an article originally published by Labour List.)
I was Labour Member of Parliament for Birmingham Northfield between 1992 and 2019 and a former Shadow Transport Minister. I now chair Healthwatch in Birmingham and Solihull, and the West Midlands Board of Remembering Srebrenica. I also work as a public affairs consultant. I am an effective community advocate and stakeholder alliance builder with a passion for human rights. I am a trustee of the Balfour Project charity and of Citizens Advice Birmingham, and a former Chair of Medical Aid for Palestinians.